Disaster aid, agricultural assistance, a farm bill extension, water infrastructure grants and dozens of other environmental provisions in Congress’ sprawling government funding deal were teetering on the brink of collapse Wednesday night after President-elect Donald Trump and his allies worked to trash the bipartisan proposal.
Less than 24 hours after congressional leaders released a stopgap funding bill that was loaded up with additional legislative priorities, business leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — some of Trump’s most outspoken and influential advisers — called on House leaders to scrap the bill in favor of a “clean” continuing resolution without riders supported by Democrats.
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance followed suit on the social media platform X, calling for congressional Republicans to allow a shutdown to begin this weekend if their eleventh-hour demands for a slimmed down CR were not met.
“We should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and the Democrats everything they want,” Trump and Vance said in a joint statement late Wednesday afternoon.
“Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH,” the statement read. “If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF.”
The demands foiled House Republican leaders’ plan to pass the bipartisan CR as early as Wednesday evening, plunging the future of $100 billion in disaster funding, $10 billion in farm aid and myriad other riders on the package into uncertainty.
Trump and Vance said Wednesday that they supported the inclusion of disaster funding and farm aid. But their other requests, such as a provision to raise the debt ceiling — a proposal that would likely take weeks to negotiate — raised concern among lawmakers of both parties that their priorities could be at risk.
House Republican leaders, reeling from the sudden change in tone from Trump, notified that there would be no votes Wednesday evening.
Republicans in the Capitol largely fell in line with Trump’s last-minute requests, telling reporters they wanted to see a narrower funding extension as long as disaster funding and farm relief still passed in the coming days. Democrats appeared exasperated.
Asked if he was concerned that disaster aid could fall out of the package, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott said, “Of course.”
“We should have had a separate bill,” he added. “We could still do it.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, replied bluntly, “Total clown show on the House side. Impossible to tell.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stayed largely quiet Wednesday evening, meeting with members of his conference in his office. The speaker also met with Vance.
Democratic leaders assembled to deliver brief comments, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) pinning the looming fallout from the president-elect’s demands on House Republicans.
He asserted that they “will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse.”
“An agreement is an agreement,” he said. “It was bipartisan, and there is nothing more to say.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement Wednesday evening condemning Trump and Vance’s call for a shutdown and stating that a lapse in government funding would undermine “communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and community health centers.”
Democrats repeatedly noted Wednesday that Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass any funding deal, limiting the scope of the changes that Trump and his allies say they want to make.
Hope for disaster, farm aid
The CR contains about $100 billion in disaster aid, $10 billion to support struggling farmers and a slew of other provisions that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle wanted passed before the end of the year. Those riders could be lost if House Republicans move forward with a slimmed down CR.
Potentially at risk would be provisions to enhance recycling and composting, language to allow year-round E15 biofuels sales, extensions for water infrastructure grants, support for semiconductor supply chains and an authorization for federal funding for the rebuild of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Republicans from disaster-affected states joined Democrats on Wednesday in demanding that disaster assistance remain in any funding deal.
“To anybody who thinks that disaster relief is pork, come to where I live, see what happened in my state, in North Carolina and Georgia,” said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, according to HuffPost.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, tried to pass a stand-alone disaster aid bill last month after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of his home state. He said Wednesday on X : “If Congressional leaders intend to leave DC before the holidays without passing disaster recovery, they should be prepared to spend Christmas in the Capitol.”
Agricultural aid for farmers struggling from crop losses, decreased income and natural disasters — another popular provision among members of both parties — also seems likely to be protected if Republican leaders move to a narrower CR given the broad GOP support.
“I’m happy to see a clean CR, as long as we can also include some supplemental … addressing some of the farm stuff,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “Whatever we need to do to get a clean CR and some supplemental, I’m prepared to vote on, but I don’t want an omnibus.”
Like the disaster relief and farmer aid, a three-month extension of the National Flood Insurance Program likely has enough bipartisan support to remain in any new funding bill. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said he thought it would be “perfunctory” and “not a sticking point” given how often the program is extended in CRs.
Similarly, Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin said one of his priorities in the bill, a 100 percent federal cost-share authorization for the replacement of Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, would likely be approved, even if not this month, given the bipartisan backing.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.), who sponsored one of two bipartisan recycling-focused provisions that made it into the CR, predicted that even those would survive — even as Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) called them out on X.
“One of the things I learned a long time ago when I first got here is bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions, and that’s why we put these together,” Carper said.
